Mystery
The phantom army of 1678
The militia waited all night for an army made of mist.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Clifftop hillfort ramparts above Worbarrow Bay
- Legend from
- Hutchins (18th c.)
- Tone
- Eerie
Thousands of soldiers marched off the hill, and no one ever found them.
In December 1678 Captain John Lawrence of Creech Grange, his brother and a group of clay-cutters saw thousands of armed men marching from the Iron Age hillfort of Flower's Barrow towards Wareham. The alarm went up, 300 militia turned out, Wareham bridge was barricaded, and Lawrence reported the invasion to the Council in London. No army ever came. Hutchins blamed the thick fogs that hang on the Purbeck hills; later writers repeated the tale and claimed further sightings in the 1930s.